ICANN’s debating what’s in a domain name

Should a company be allowed to run a generic term such as tire, insurance or book as a domain and wall off its use from competitors?

That’s the question the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is wrestling with as it prepares to begin awarding firms new top-level domains — the words to the right of the dot. The nonprofit firm has been evaluating about 1,900 applications for new domains, many of them common dictionary terms.

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There had been agreement that companies like Apple could win generic words such as apple because of its brand.

But companies such as Amazon, Google, Goodyear, L’Oreal and others also applied for a wide array of words and indicated that they would like to operate the registry as “closed” — meaning they may not allow other firms to buy what are known as second-level domains.

Clearly, companies want to own and control generic words as domains so that they can offer their services. But with that comes the possibility of blocking competitors who want to attach their brand to a term. For example, Ford might want to buy ford.truck but be blocked from doing so by the owner of .truck.

Now ICANN, which has been largely silent on the issue, is soliciting public comment.

“The train is leaving the station,” Akram Atallah, ICANN’s chief operating officer, said to POLITICO in an interview. “There are a few instances where stakeholders are feeling this is an issue that could limit competition, and therefore, we should bring it to the forefront.”

When it voted to expand the Internet names in 2010, ICANN leaders said they were doing so to encourage innovation. The firm did not specify in its domain name guidebook what terms like generic or closed might mean.

In a letter to ICANN’s leaders, Russell Pangborn, assistant general counsel of trademarks at Microsoft, wrote that the “situation threatens the openness and freedom of the Internet and could have harmful consequences for Internet users worldwide. These applications also present a competitive threat to other companies.”

“Generic words used in a generic way belong to all people,” Michele Neylon of Blacknight, a European Web-hosting firm, wrote in another letter signed by others. “It is inherently in the public interest to allow access to … new [generic top-level domains] to the whole of the Internet Community, e.g., .BLOG, .MUSIC, .CLOUD.”

Philip Corwin, founding principal of Virtualaw, who has one client competing with Google for some of the terms, said he will begin to lobby officials in Washington and Europe. “It is emerging as a big issue and one that is beyond ICANN but the future of e-commerce,” he said.

Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice and policy vice chairman for the ICANN business constituency, said there are “legitimate concerns about competition and potential confusion for consumers if a single competitor has perpetual control of a generic keyword as a top-level domain.”

Atallah said that having a generic term is not a guaranteed ticket to success.

The owner has to “do a lot of marketing and business development to be relevant in the marketplace,” he said. “It is not a given just by having the name, you have market share. It is not just the name that makes the name.”